The Harvest of Sorrow

Title: The Harvest of Sorrow – Soviet Collectivization and the Terror-Famine

Author: Robert Conquest

Publisher: The Bodley Head, 2018 (First published 1986)

ISBN: 9781847925671

Pages: 412

The first half of the twentieth century saw two authoritarian regimes in Europe massacring their own citizens on the basis of a flawed ideology. Hitler exterminated six million Jews while Lenin and Stalin ensured the deaths of about three times that figure. It is claimed that actions recorded in this book resulted in the loss of twenty human lives for each letter in it. The book begins its narrative with this sombre pointer in the preface. The author wades through available evidence to narrate the severe famine that raged in the USSR, especially in Ukraine and its environs, killing five million men, women and children in 1921-22 and another twelve million in 1930-37. Robert Conquest was one of the twentieth century’s greatest historians of the Soviet Union. His books revealed the true extent and nature of Stalin’s political executions and imprisonments.

Communism always had an uneasy relationship with the peasantry. For them, the proletariat meant the urban industrial working class. Accommodation of farmers in the larger scheme of things was always a result of compromise in order to rope in the peasants in the class struggle. Marx had spoken of the ‘idiocy of rural life’ and praised capitalism for freeing much of the population from this idiocy. Khrushchev later told that ‘for Stalin, peasants were scum’. Small scale production in rural areas was understood to engender capitalism and Marx argued for ‘gradual abolition of the distinction between town and country’. The state of agriculture that was handed over to the Bolsheviks in 1917 was dismal, with only half of the peasant holdings having iron ploughs. Crop yield was only slightly higher than that of fourteenth century England. The Communist party identified slightly better off rural folk as kulaks and sought to destroy them under the label of class enemy. Some form of redistribution of arable land was made immediately after the revolution, but it was forcibly aggregated into huge farms during collectivisation. The party allowed one representative for every 25,000 workers, but in the case of peasants, 125000 of them had had to be on the rolls to deserve a representative.

Communism was an urban, industrial phenomenon in essence, but Russia was out and out an agricultural country. The Russian level of industrialisation and the size and maturity of the proletariat were insufficient to manage the transformation of a huge agrarian majority. This meant that farm surplus was heavily required for industrialisation. Though grain was always in short supply, USSR did not import grain till 1960s. The forced collection of grain paved the way for the devastating famine.

Stalin tried dekulakisation first in the countryside in 1929. Impossible quotas of grain were imposed on individuals and those deemed to be kulaks were inflicted crippling fines of up to five times the original quota,if they failed to meet it. Defaulters were transported to labour camps in distant Siberia which were designed more as a device to exterminate the class enemy rather than extracting labour from the unfortunate men. Kolkhozes, which were large collectivist agricultural factories, came next. But this could only make sense when the peasantry had adequate machinery and other goods from towns, which was not forthcoming. The urge to the giant farm had no basis except an urge to urbanise the countryside and produce the grain factories hypothesized by a German scholar (Marx) a couple of generations previously (p.109). Ideology, rather than sound economic advice, was the motive force of the Party. Economistshad the choice of supporting the Party’s new plans or going to prison.

This book vividly portrays the ways in which Communism dehumanised its workers and made obedience to commands from higher ups a virtue. The hunt against kulaks is a case in point. People who owned three or four cows and two or three horses were by definition kulaks. The average kulak’s income was often lower than that of the average rural official who was persecuting him as a representative of the wealthy class. Kulaks had already been greatly impoverished by the time of collectivisation. Even then, fanatic comrades virtually collected kulaks in their nets.They felt no compunction in separating family members by sending them to different camps. Communistsglossed over this human misery with heartless rhetoric such as “Moscow does not believe in tears”. Getting a kulak into jail was as simple as writing a denunciation such as the victim had paid people to work for him as hired hands. The Party’srationale was that even though not one of them was guilty of anything, they belonged to the class that was guilty of everything. Sometimes the people fought back. They sold or slaughtered and ate their cattle before entering the collective farms and letting the comrades take the cattle away.

Contrary to the lofty slogans frequently uttered by the Communists wherever they are not in power, the entire population of the Soviet Union were living in an open jail with no personal freedom or human rights.People needed internal passports to travel from one place to the other which had to be approved by the head of the kolkhoz in which they worked. Workers were paid by labour-days they had put in.This counted the actual hours they worked and not simply the time interval between the instant they came in to the work place and went out of it. A typical labour-day involved ploughing of a hectare of land or the threshing of a ton of grain. Naturally, some of the labourers had to work more than a day to get a day's worth of credit. Chairmen of kolkhozes and tractor drivers earned two labour-days for a day's work. The payment was a pittance. The workers obtained 300 grams of bread and some cash paid annually, which could not even buy a pair of shoes.

The great famine of 1932-33 was caused by fall inproduction and rise in requisition of grain. Conquest drives this point home with facts and figures. The requisition was based on biological yieldscalculated by the area sowedmultiplied by the estimated yield. Quantity of grain actually threshed was not taken into account. When famine raged, the officials rightfully suspected of secret hordes of grain. Starving people had their limbs swelled and the officials tracked and searched the homes of people with no visible signs of swelling. Instead of the hammer and sickle, a distended belly became the symbol of Communism for the time being. While people starved and died in the farmsteads, granaries bursting with grain were reserved for the army and city dwellers. Famine was just not sufficient a reason for release of grain. Party officials and their wives who had large rations would sell their surplus food in return for the starving peasants’ valuables at bargain prices.

This book is noted for explaining the frightful plight of the Soviet people under Communist party’s autocratic rule. Religious freedom was guaranteed in the Constitution on principle, but was regularly undermined. Moscow city had 460 orthodox churches before the revolution that came down to 100 by 1933. Churches were turned into cinemas, machine-parts stores, granaries and clubs. Church bells were melted to collect metal for Soviet industrialisation. Thirteenarchbishops died in Soviet prisons in the period 1928-38. The book includes an observation by Victor Kravchenko after he defected to the West. Henotes how families disintegrated on the face of merciless death:“The first who died were men. Later on, the children.And last of all, the women. But before they died, people often lost their senses and ceased to be human beings”.

The author assumes that the readers are familiar with collective farms and how they were organised and functioned. We don't get any glimpses of information on this front. Some arguments are buttressed with quotes from fiction on the surmise that they reflected reality better than state records or people’s letters which were subject to strict censoring. Sholokhov’s books have been used much. It requires a hardened heart on the part of readers to cruise through chapters 12 (The Famine Rages) and 15 (Children). It is amusing to note that the author displays no hint of the impending collapse of communism in the USSR. This book was published in 1986, and just five years later, Communism was pushing up the daisies. But the author bows out with this remark:“in any future crisis of the USSR,it is clear that Ukrainian nationhood will be a factor and a vital one”(p.337). After five years, Ukraine indeed became an independent republic.

Rating: 3 Star

Homo Deus

Title: Homo Deus – A Brief History of Tomorrow

Author: Yuval Noah Harari

Publisher: Vintage, 2017 (First published 2015)

ISBN: 9781784703936

Pages: 513

Yuval Noah Harari captured the imagination of millions of readers with his masterpiece ‘Sapiens’ which I am yet to read. This book is designed as something between a sequel and an afterthought of its more famous sibling. In this book, Harari sets out to explore the uncharted territory of the future humanscape, armed with a cutting analysis of human progress till now. Predicting the future of technology is a precarious initiative. We have seen Lord Kelvin prophesying the end of physics by the year 1900 and how wide he was off the mark. Harari makes three predictions about human life in the twenty-first century with one eye unflailingly focused on the road ahead while the other scanning the past for confirmation of his numerous theories. Wars and diseases will be totally eliminated and mankind would achieve the power to upgrade itself into a powerful being that is capable of exercising many of the privileges of divine beings in myths and legends such as growing organs or everlasting life. This quasi-divine species he euphemistically call Homeo deus. Harari is an Israeli historian and a professor of history at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

For thousands of years, humankind prayed and hoped for a day in which there will be no wars, no diseases and people lived for a very long time. Religions offered promises at first, but they rather contributed only bellicosity in their adherents. There is little chance of peace even if one religion dominated the entire earth. The religious wars between the Catholics and Protestants in the seventeenth century and the continuing strife between the Shia and Sunni factions in Islam reaffirm this hypothesis. On the other hand, increasingly lethal weapons applied brakes on man’s urge to go to war by propagating the doctrine of MAD - mutually assured destruction. Harari argues that without nuclear weapons, there would have been no Beatles, no Woodstock and no overflowing supermarkets in the west. The socialist world led by the USSR overwhelmed the liberal world in conventional weapons, but the US and its allies trumped them on nuclear warheads. Humanity is on the cusp of attaining immortality - which only means that there will not be any deaths due to diseases - even at the risk of handing over the burden of running the world to powerful, inorganic and non-conscious algorithms.

The progress experienced by Homo sapiens in the last few centuries is not solely engendered by technological improvements. A profound transformation was also going on in the social front. For 300 years, the world has been dominated by humanism, which sanctifies the life, happiness and power of Homo sapiens. Humanism put man at the centre of creation. It elevated us as the ultimate source of meaning of the world order. By corollary, our free will is therefore the highest authority of all. By such a transfer, meaning and source of authority divorced themselves from the divine will. This prime position of human will is manifest in five idioms of the modern world: the voter knows best, the customer is always right, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, if it feels good, do it and think for yourself. Harari also describes the split of humanism into three branches: liberalism, socialist humanism and evolutionary humanism. The first is epitomized by Western democratic societies, the second by the now defunct Soviet style communist societies and the third was represented by the Nazi-fascist regimes. The last two, for all practical purposes, no longer exist in the world. Harari’s rigid classifications remind the readers of the accuracy of the exact sciences. How far one could go with such a classification in the humanities is debatable.

Only physical and structural level, man is not above the other animals. How then did we get on top of them? Tool making and intelligence were particularly important for the ascent of mankind. But this was not the whole story. A million years ago, humans were already the most intelligent, tool making animal. The cutting edge came about around 70,000 years ago when the species underwent a cognitive revolution. Speech enabled humans to co-operate flexibly in large numbers, even with complete strangers. No animal shares this unique faculty. That's why the numbers are never enough to mount a revolution. Such upheavals are usually made by small networks of agitators rather than by the masses. Only man can weave an inter-subjective web of meaning, a web of laws, forces, critics and places that exist purely in their collective imagination. This web, exemplified by such abstract concepts as a nation, religion or even commercial enterprises, allows humans to bond together and flourish.

Harari handles the post-humanist scenario, taking into account the development in microbiology and computers. When the working of the brain was analysed, the concept of free will breathed its last. Our decisions, will, delusions and the feeling of general well being are made possible by changes in electrochemical processes in it and the startling fact is that it can be controlled remotely! Along with free will, the idea of a single authentic self went obsolete in one stroke. The next step came when it was evident that organisms are algorithms and life is a complex series of data processing. The advent of artificial intelligence decoupled from conscience and was non-conscious in nature, but highly intelligent algorithms may soon know us better than we know ourselves. Harari predicts the death of humanism at this point which is also where algorithms take charge of the planet. Humans would be treated as pet animals at that time. Much of this talk sounds like science fiction.

The author is unconcerned with the sensibilities of conservative readers. His statement that “if an extramarital affair provides an outlet for emotional and sexual desire that are not satisfied by your spouse of twenty years and if your new lover is kind, passionate and sensitive to your needs - why not enjoy it?” (p.263) maybe sound practical advice but comes as a shocking moral pronouncement for most others. Another casual generalisation that ruffles the feathers of many is that “when genetic engineering and artificial intelligence reveal their full potential, liberalism, democracy and free markets might become as obsolete as flint knives, tape cassettes, Islam and communism” (p.323).

The book is nicely written, but with occasional whiffs of pompous hot air. Staunch believers may better avoid this book in which a tirade against God and religion is seen in every third page. The narrative is designed like an absorbing speech or an enchanting lecture. It is interesting to read as a whole, but there are portions which the reader finds tiresome, such as conscience of sentient beings, and the ethical repercussions of the inevitable algorithmic takeover.

The book is recommended.

Rating: 3 Star

The Decline of Nayar Dominance

Title: The Decline of Nayar Dominance – Society and Politics in Travancore, 1847-1908

Author: Robin Jeffrey

Publisher: Vikas Publishing House, 1976 (First)

ISBN: 0706904869

Pages: 376

The southwestern state of Kerala leads most other states of India on the indices of social progress and human development. This belies an era of extreme oppression faced by the lower castes among Hindus. Learning of the inhuman treatment of the slave castes and licentious nature of marital customs of the upper castes, Swami Vivekananda once likened Kerala to a lunatic asylum. The Nair community swept aside other Hindu castes in carving out a powerful niche for themselves. Their monopoly was total in the administration and military of the princely states that constituted Kerala. In addition, they controlled virtually the entire land resources and agriculture. Trade and commerce by individuals were non-existent around the beginning of the nineteenth century, since the state exercised monopoly on the sale of pepper, tobacco and most other cash crops. This book is a study of the social and political changes resulting from the impact of a cash economy, Western-style education, improved communications, and a British-inspired system of law on the complex social structure of Travancore. It also deals with the breakdown of the matrilineal social system and with the growth of social assertiveness and political aspirations among low-caste Hindus and Christians. It is the story of a dominant caste brought down from comfortable supremacy over its neighbours to keen competition with them in sixty years. At the time of publication of this book in 1976, Robin Jeffrey was a research fellow in the Australian National University at Canberra. A Canadian by birth, Jeffrey taught in a high school in India from 1967-9 and the Regional Institute of English in Chandigarh.

Kerala Brahmins had weaved a web of myth and legend to justify their position at the apex of society. Even though Nairs dominated the society on material means, being Sudras, they were at the bottom of the Varna system. It was believed that sage Parasurama had brought Sudras to the reclaimed land of Kerala to act as the servants and bodyguards of Nambudiri Brahmins. Established custom demanded Nairs not to have formal marriage relations among themselves and to keep their women always in a state of availability to satisfy the sexual desires of Nambudiris. Innovating further, Nairs extended their accessibility to all upper castes, including non-Malayali Brahmins, Kshatriyas and rulers of the land. This ritual pimping secured the position of the males among them and the community predominated over all other castes. Ritual pollution, which in the rest of India was transmitted only by touch, could in Kerala be communicated over a distance. Non-approachability was an invention of Nairs and Nambudiris.

Travancore came under the paramountcy of the British by around 1800 after it sought their assistance to defeat Tipu Sultan's aggression. Christian missionaries flocked in large numbers to the state and wielded great influence in politics through the British Resident. With a view to enable religious conversions, they set up schools for children. Low-caste adherents to these missions were benefiting from education, which not only gave them an enhanced idea of their own status but the skills to carry on trade or seek salaried work outside Travancore. This helped bolster the literacy levels in the kingdom. In 1901, Travancore had a literacy rate of 22 per cent which was the highest in India. In nine small towns, it was higher than that of Kolkata. By 1905, there were more than twenty Malayalam and English newspapers. Nairs also benefited. Even though they constituted only twenty percent of the population, they held much of the land and sixty per cent of the jobs in government.

The time period of the subject matter of this book is the 61 years from 1847 to 1908. Historical events of profound significance took place in this interval between the accession of Uthram Tirunal Marthanda Varma and the height of the reign of Moolam Tirunal Rama Varma when serious discussions to do away with the matrilineal joint family were being undertaken. On second thoughts however, I feel the author should have extended his study till 1936, by which time reservations in government jobs were assured to the lower castes and the Temple Entry Proclamation came into force. Earlier, the hiring of lower-caste Hindus in public service was due to specific concessions granted to them on a one-time basis, but reservations brought in a systematic program to deliberately exclude the Nairs and upper castes. This served the most severe blow to Nair dominance. The early part of the period was a time of progressive thought in Travancore. In the 1860s, the Dewan, Maharaja and the royal family showed a positive enthusiasm for certain aspects of administrative modernization and pursued new programs with determination and zeal. However, this did not mean that they reformed their personal lives. Ayilyam Tirunal and Visakham Tirunal were typical conservatives. Both were not prepared to eat in the same room with Englishmen. They conscientiously performed the many costly religious ceremonies of their theocratic state and received their European guests in the early morning, before their purificatory bath. When Visakham Tirunal lay dying in 1885, his Nair wife and children were forbidden by his own orders not to come near him to avoid ritual pollution. Only Brahmins were allowed to touch his body, and thereby denying competent medical care to reach him.

Jeffrey describes the minutiae of the reforms that sounded the death knell of Nair dominance. Most joint families of Nairs possessed Sirkar pattam (government lease) lands that could not be sold or disposed to a third party other than lapsing back to the government. In 1867, the government granted full ownership rights to the possessors. Land could be monetized from then onwards and land value shot up for the first time. Forced labour from the lower castes was enlisted for public works by a system known as Uzhiyam. This was abolished and wages in cash were given to the labourers in return for their work. The increased freedom of labour to stay away from work produced shortages which further notched up the wages. Upon the constant pressure from Madras government to liberalise the economy, Travancore lifted the state monopoly on pepper and tobacco and imposed duties in its place. This helped to usher in an era of cash economy and enabled the lower castes to improve their lot in a big way. Their labour was now rewarded with cash and coir products which they manufactured fetched money in the export markets. Nairs were at the receiving end of this new phenomenon. Apart from a few government employees, most Nairs felt it humiliating to work under the orders of another person, especially if he belonged to an inferior caste.

The social transformation portrayed by Jeffrey in these pages was palpable, but by no means irreversible, if Nairs turned out to be a bit more pragmatic. Syrians, other Christians, non-Malayali Brahmins and Ezhavas, who had less burdensome family institutions than the impartible, matrilineal joint family (marumakkathayam tharavad) of the Nairs were prepared to attempt new occupations and had some experience in dealing regularly with money. Almost a tenth of the present day Kerala population is employed outside its frontiers and we see the origins of this practice in the era under study in this book. From the 1840s, educated converts had been going to Sri Lanka to work on coffee estates. More than providing a lucrative income for the expatriates, it provided a safe place for the converts to flourish, away from the watchful eyes of the Nairs. Later, other lower castes followed in their footsteps for the same set of reasons. This so spread in society that all castes were eventually willing to go abroad in search of greener pastures. By 1908, the unquestioned dominance which Nairs had enjoyed sixty years earlier had vanished. They still held many advantages, but these were not unchallenged and the economic power of the majority of Nair families was manifestly on the decline. The book ends on this note.

The book is typeset like it was done using a primitive typewriter, with both sides of the paragraph not even properly aligned. This makes it difficult to read. It is true that it was published in 1976, but we have seen books better in presentation and style that was brought out much earlier. It uses strange spellings that were not in common use even in 1976. It uses ‘Nayar’ for Nair, ‘Irava’ for Ezhava, ‘Shanar’ for Channar and so on. The greatest plus point of the book is that it brings into the open the transformation of Kerala from the medieval to modern times that was running coterminous with the fall of Nair dominance. Over time, the caste identity of a person ceased to be his lone characteristic. Class, education and intellectual achievement also became parameters in fully describing a person. The extensive tables of statistical data presented along with the text makes this book unique in its genre.

The book is highly recommended.

Rating: 4 Star